dragoman:
Thanks for asking!

I worked in two different crews on the Bay Bridge
in the 1990s: the Shop Crew (Building maintenance)
and the Concrete Crew. That is one big bridge to
maintain! Of course, for big jobs, contractors
are called, but we did the smaller jobs.

There used to be 4 bridge maintenance crews: the
Cone Crew, the Concrete Crew, the Steel Crew and
the Shop Crew. Now there is only one crew. Sad.

I enjoyed my time being able to work on that awesome
bridge. It is an engineering marvel, and I never cease
being amazed by it. The tunnel in Yerba Buena Island
is still the largest bore vehicular tunnel in the world.
And the original East Span hass the third-longest
cantilever span in the world -- and the workers who built
the bridge connected the two ends on the first try!
The East Span's piers also had the deepest pilings in the
world -- 243 feet below the water for Pier E-3.

The mud on the east side of YBI is far, far too deep to
allow a traditional suspension bridge to be built there.
Piers for that type of bridge must rest on bedrock. (I
don’t think that anyone even knows exactly how deep the
mud is there!)

The 1989 quake, which occurred an hour and a half after
the end of our workday. That, and even more importantly, the
World Series game being in San Francisco, saved many lives.

We worked 12-hour shifts to help get the bridge open to traffic
again. I remember driving on 17 towards Oakland early in the
morning, when it was still dark out, in the week after the quake,
and thinking, "Gosh -- I hope there's not another earthquake!" as
I was driving under all those overpasses.

I got to go out to the area just east of Tower E-9, where
the upper deck fell onto the lower deck. That was weird -- being
on the deck on foot, with little traffic! It was also a weird
feeling to look out of the maintenance crews' building (the former
SN Car Inspection Building) across the lanes of I 80 and see very
little traffic. It was even weirder to walk across those lanes
before the bridge was reopened to through traffic. I thought,
"Pinch me -- I must be dreaming!" Weird!

In my opinion, the Bay Bridge did very well during the quake. It
behaved as it was designed to behave. FWIW, our carpenter in the
Shop Crew measured 27 inches of east-west swaying on the East Span,
but he said it well could have swayed more than that because the area
he measured had locked up after that 27 inches. I know that is much
more than has been officially reported, but no one asked him.

Two other facts: one of the two leadworkers in the Steel Crew told me
he was out on a Caltrans boat with some members of the steel crew earlierr
on the afternoon of the quake, and he saw the tide come ROARING in --
in a way that he had never seen it do before. And the Steel Crew often
went out on the Caltrans boat to remove bird guano from the pier caps.
(Boy, was I ever glad I wasn't assigned to the Steel Crew!) And --folks
in the Steel Crew were on the pier cap of Tower E-9 the very afternoon
of the quake! Boy, were THEY -- and everyone else! -- glad the quake
didn't happen earlier!

I have more I could share, but this is already, but this post is
already long enough as it is.

If you or anyone else is interested in more bridge stories, please
let me know, and I'll post some.

Margaret
(Bay Bridge fan, too!)